Transforming Dubai: Oasis to Tourist’s Paradise

Bikramaditya K. Choudhary and Nian Paul

Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 2018, vol. 5, issue 4, 349-364

Abstract: Abstract Owing to fast pace of urbanization and associated development, Dubai rose to global prominence in a matter of a few years. Dubai has transformed its geographical incapacities to phantasmagorical way of living; from building the superlative structures to its magnificent architectural fantasies, to the reconfiguring of a desert into an urban hub of business, logistics, tourism, and retail shopping paradise. In the race to achieve global competence, it has changed its ecological realities into pursuits driven by enigma of capital and desire of hyper-consumerism. The creation of the cityscape paralleled by vanishing natural and cultural spaces of the recent past, retrofitted with global desires like shopping complexes, beach resorts, luxurious hotels, ski clubs, art museums, operas, etc. The article is situated in the context of the urban spatial transformation of Dubai, driven by neoliberal politics and the changing human–nature relationships riding on the accelerating capital circulation.

Keywords: Spatial transformation; political ecology; tourism economy; neoliberalism; geographical knowledge production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2347798918795936 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:crmide:v:5:y:2018:i:4:p:349-364

DOI: 10.1177/2347798918795936

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Contemporary Review of the Middle East
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().